December 23, 1864

Columbia Tenn. Dec. 23rd 1864

Dear Mother,

We are still on the advance. I wrote you a few lines from our last camp whare we remained one day and two nights. The last night we were thare, about 7 o'clock we were ordered to break camp and start, which we did. It was raining very hard (it did not look much like rain in the morning. I believe I said I hoped or thought we were going to have fine weather, but we were disappointed.)

We had not gone more than three miles when we were ordered to about face and return to our old camping ground which made us feel rather out of sorts. We were out just long enough to get wet through and covered in mud and then we had to put our tents on muddy ground, which if we had remained there, the ground would have been dry. Our fires had gone out and by the time we had pitched our tents and rekindled our fires we were more like drowned men than anything else and worse than all we had to sleep in our wet clothes, so you can judge how comfortable we passed the night. Towards morning it began snowing and freezing quite hard. When I got up in the morning my overcoat was one mass of ice. The day turned out to be fine but cold and towards noon we all got dry and appeared to have forgotten all about the hardships of the night previous, and started off in the afternoon and reached this place about supper time. We had a very severe cold night, but we kept up good camp fires and managed to keep something like warm. We remain here tonight but how much longer I cannot say, but probably only till morning.

Hood is still on the skiddadle. I should like to know how much farther we will follow him. I hope they will give us winter quarters soon. We are now in Genl Smiths command, which used to be the sixteenth corp, but it is now composed of detachments from different ones. Ours is the first Brigade, Third Division detachment of the 17th A. Corps, but it generally all called the sixteenth corps. There is one thing l like about this command. They are all old troops. I never want to get into a fight with new troops again as thare is more danger from them than from the enemy. We had a fair trial of that at Franklin. We were then with the 23rd corp in which is a number of conscripts and raw recruits. Well as it is time to get supper and I'm cook tonight I must close.

Give my love to all. Emmas or your letters have not been received yet.

Your Affectionate Son

Edward

Direct to Nashvílle, Tenn.